Offbeat Eats

As our regular readers know, we here at Offbeat Eats have been trying to avail ourselves of the various community meals that spring up around the region. Looking through the local Kearsarge Shopper as we approached the 4th of July holiday weekend, I noticed an announcement for Warner, NH’s United Church of Warner’s 4th of July Community Breakfast. Since we didn’t have anything planned for that morning, we figured it would be good to drive down to Warner and check it out.

During our annual trip to Lake George, we usually end up going out for breakfast several times, exploring the area. One of our more regular destinations (one that somehow has managed to avoid a review to this point, probably due to lack of photos) is down in Queensbury: The Silo. The Silo is one of those roadside institutions that gives an old school aura, like farmland and its buildings were converted to a restaurant; That’s partly true: The Silo used to be a barn and, well, silo, but not in Glens Falls, but at a more rural location in Saratoga County, getting relocated here in the 1980s to make a restaurant and gift shop.

Like most years, we spent almost a week in June attending the Ohana: Luau at the Lake charity even in Lake George, NY. Getting to Lake George always involves crossing Vermont East-West, which doesn’t have any truly optimal routes. This time, we decided to take a more southerly route, taking us through Wallingford, VT around time for a late breakfast. Which was good, since Wallingford has a new-ish (since 2023) breakfast option I had been wanting to check out: Bacon & Batter.

After a very pleasant hiking trip in Acadia National Park, we decided to have our celebration meal someplace that was on the way back towards NH and MA. We decided that Ellsworth, just outside of Acadia National Park. was a particular good spot to check out. Ellsworth started as a fishing site, then in the early history of our country grew into a major 19th-century lumber and shipbuilding powerhouse, before those industries started to shrink. Nowadays, Ellsworth is primarily situated as “The Gateway to Acadia National Park” and the “Downeast” region. Looking over the available options, we found a quirky one that sounded just up our alley: Josie’s Country Café, located inside Josie’s Country Store on Surry Road, just outside of downtown Ellsworth.

A recent hiking trip had us passing through Claremont, New Hampshire during breakfast time. Claremont has a good selection of restaurants, but it also has several locations that just, for one reason or another, seem to be challenging for restaurants to find success. These locations have a rapid series of different restaurants back-to-back, while the local diners hope that at some point something finally manages to stick. One of those locations is on Washington Street, the main route between Claremont and Newport, next to the Burger King. This location has been more than a few restaurants in my years living in the area; of the ones I remember, it was a “flash-fired pizza” place run by Ramunto’s (which I actually liked), then vacant for a bit, and then for a few years it was Claremont Country Cafe (unrelated to the now-shutter Country Kitchen in Newport), then that changed into Fast Lane Diner, which only lasted for a few months before reopening as Odd Duck Diner and Donuts.

A recent trip over to Dover, New Hampshire resulted in us looking for breakfast options around the greater Hooksett area (the region between Concord and Manchester, NH, straddling the Merrimack River). Until very recently, this would have been an almost automatic choice of The Robie Store for breakfast sandwiches… but The Robie Store closed permanently a few weeks ago. So, after taking a look at various online reviews, I ended up picking Shirley’s Kitchen in Suncook Village as a good option. Their online media showed a mean-looking Benedict with some decent home fries, and I always have rather liked Suncook Village (just around the corner from Shirley’s is Oddball Brewing, which we’ve previously visited and enjoyed).

We recently had to do a short day trip over to the Adirondacks in New York, and that left us looking for a new place for breakfast on the drive over. We’ve had a lot of great little spots on this drive, like Sugar and Spice and Big Apple Diner, but on this particular trip our timing lead us to wanting to explore Fair Haven and Castleton a bit. We ended up going to downtown Fair Haven, where we found The Wooden Soldier.

My robotics judging in Falmouth required me to get up fairly early in the morning, before most every decent breakfast joint in Portland is open. But since Portland remains, to this day, an active fishing port, there are a handful of places that are open early in the morning, and right down the street from my waterfront hotel was one old school stalwart, Becky’s Diner, which opens at 5am.

As I mentioned in my review of Cedar Street Café, since the hotel we were staying in didn’t have on-site breakfast, it was a good excuse to go check out some of the local establishments, despite the relatively heavy snow. Our college Doc Tesla had given a hearty endorsement to a relatively new spot he had found just a few miles west in Sturbridge’s Fiskdale village, The Little Rest Stop, so we decided to go over and check it out.

While we were staying at the Sturbridge Host hotel for a few days (whose on-site restaurants, weren’t, at least for the winter, open), we decided each morning to venture forth and try various local breakfast spots for breakfast. The first we tried was Cedar Street Café, which is just down the street from the hotel, although confusingly, not actually on Cedar Street (it’s sister restaurant Cedar Street Grille is, and the parking lot entrance is across from the Grille, although depending on which mapping service you are using, you may get some odd directions). Another of the local restaurants owned by Table3 (same owners as The Duck), the Café focuses on coffee, breakfast, and light lunch.